Atelman, Nooooo!

On Valentine’s Day we took a car to Ubud, located an hour north into the mountains. Home to rice paddies, yoga, and traditional arts and crafts, Ubud was a nice change of pace simply because there was more to do there. On our second day, we visited the Agung Rai Museum of Art, just one of the many museums in the area. ARMA’s mix of traditional and modern Balinese art was housed in two buildings on an extensive — and beautiful — garden. The whole experience was lovely. In general, Ubud had many more things to do, from restaurants and shops to monkey forests, elephant temples, and various dance shows. I, of course, didn’t do any of these things, as my main goal was to visit the Bali Bird Park, which I did on a sunny Friday afternoon — the only wholly sunny day we had. I didn’t even know about the bird park until we drove by it on the way up from Canggu, and immediately made it my singular goal. There was a zoo nearby too, and an adjoining reptile park but I skipped both of those t...

A lot of people asked me: Why Bali? Great question, since I’m not exactly into beach vacations, nor am I into the whole Elizabeth Gilbert thing. Well, over the past year or so, two separate friends have spent extensive time there and both have told me — specifically me — that I had to go surf there. One is a fluke but two is a trusted recommendation right? So off to Bali for a month! I was waiting for my friend to quit her job in New York and she finally did back in January. Bags packed, apartment ditched, belongings stowed away, she met me in Taipei and then we set off to Indonesia together. My main concern heading to Bali was the volcano situation but as it turned out, that potentially Bonnie situation wasn’t really a situation at all. Nobody told me about the food though. But more on that later. Our first stop, Canggu, is on the southwest coast of Bali, about a half hour from Ngurah Rai airport. A friend of a friend was already there and he said “It’s like Brooklyn.” And i...

Taipei has been dreary. Grey skies, light rain, flippy winds. All much colder than I remembered. Aren’t I supposed to come here to escape winter? Instead I find myself wearing all my layers, including my New York leg thermals, simply to stay warm. And when I’m at home, curled up reading or watching NBA, I’m under two blankets and too afraid to move outside the comfort zone. Why don’t Taiwan apartments have heat? No need, it’s a semi-tropical place! Psssh, yeah right. Bali sunshine couldn’t come fast enough... Before leaving, I had a semi-disaster as I stupidly locked myself out of my phone. Did you know that if you unsuccessfully attempt to unlock your iPhone ten times it goes into shutdown mode? While my fingers were still damp, I tried to access it to Shazam a song (never got it) and summarily took it from “oh forgot my passcode” to “panic, it’s gonna have to be wiped!” So my last day in Taipei was spent running from Apple Store to semi-fake Apple store, eventually paying $1...